Speleologists Rescued At Last

A busy café in central Paris, while
everybody
is Christmas shopping elsewhere.

Beef War, Strikes, President and
Socialists

Paris:- Sunday, 21. November 1999:- Tonight's big
TV-news is about the rescue of the seven speleologists
trapped deep underground as a result of last week's
'Hurricane Aude.'

No efforts were spared to get the underground explorers
back to the surface. The story was a major news item for
the entire week and images of mud-covered search
speleologists and of all the heavy-duty equipment brought
in, were impressive.

Spokesmen speleologists consistently expressed optimism
about recovering the missing seven men alive, which was a
bit hard for a surface person like myself to believe.

It was the biggest operation of its kind in France and
its duration was the longest. The préfet - governor
- of the department, not one of France's most prosperous,
admitted the cost of the rescue would be high. At times the
rescue crew numbered 400.

One rescuer said the massive use of heavy-duty equipment
was only possible because of the search location being on
an army base, and not down in some deep canyon.

There are quite a number of speleologists in France and
they get into trouble underground fairly regularly. When
this happens there is a general tizzy.

Although TV-news devoted some of is airtime to the
clean-up of the catastrophic wreckage caused by
'Hurricane Aude' last weekend -
which affected thousands, the major focus of their coverage
was on the trapped speleologists.

The 'New Balal,'
perhaps Paris' only un-Indian-looking Indian
restaurant.

The scale of the rescue had nothing in common with
efforts routinely used to try and find people buried under
avalanches. Those buried are usually characterized as
careless; and sometimes at fault for causing so much
trouble.

But the speleologists in question were highly praised as
being professionals. Glossed over has been the fact that
they knowingly went down into the caves, to an area known
to have underground rivers - without paying much attention
to weather reports of the coming storm.

Beef War
Settled?

Apparently the French and the British have reached a
compromise agreement that will allow the export of British
beef to France, but will not compel anybody in France to
knowingly eat it.

The compromise was a simple one. Britain agreed to label
all beef for export with some sort of 'British beef'
sticker - such as the one routinely used by British
merchants to prove how patriotic their customers in the UK
are by 'buying Brit.'

The agreement came too late to prevent French TV-news
from showing hard-core British beer drinkers pouring
Beaujolais Nouveau into gutters on Thursday, which they did
with glee.

Strikes - 1. January 2000

Unlike the Euro's quietly successful launch early this
year, France's 35-hour work week launch, to be in effect at
the beginning the coming year, is not going smoothly.

Negotiations between employees and management have been
going on non-stop, and some agreements within a few
enterprises have been reached.

These are usually private companies that are attempting
to gain a competitive advantage by biting-the-bullet
early so that they can be functioning when their
competitors are mired in a slow change-over.

Last week it was the turn of the state radio and
television employees to walk off the job, in
dissatisfaction with management's proposals. Radio-FIP
plays classical music instead of its regular program, and
Radio France-Info plays FIP's usual music selection; while
nobody does the non-stop news.

A central Paris
crêperie being readied for 'l'after-shopping' on
Saturday.

Today on Sunday, things seem to have returned to normal,
with France-Info broadcasting its regular news feature,
'The Life of Plants.' The evening main TV-news also seems
normal, with only the weather-news getting by on a
'fewer-frills' standby version.

In the state sector, which is being seen more and more
as a state-owned service sector of the economy, the
sticking point usually involves the hiring of extra staff
and the management's reluctance to do so.

The Socialist-led government is widely supported by
public employees for introducing the 35-hour work week
legislation. Unions support it too, in the hopes that it
will reduce unemployment - which is also the government's
intention.

However, as is often the case in France, there is a wide
gap between 'good intentions' and putting them into
practice.

That government enterprises are hard hit indicates that
there is a backlog of unresolved grievances, and the
35-hour 'new hire' problems are really just another new one
on top.

On a practical level, the truck drivers should be slated
for strike action sometime in the future. The drivers,
during the last two strikes, were already complaining about
over-long working hours - and the 'settlements' of their
previous strikes have never been fully
implemented.

President Clinton Meets the 'Socialist
International'

This is a story from TV-news, because it seems to have
escaped Le Parisien - which is not on strike.

After last week's meeting of the 'Socialist
International' at La Défense, a whole herd of
Euro-leaders trooped off for a conference in Istanbul,
which was about something to do with Russia, I think.

Somewhere along the line, President Clinton joined the
whole group. Either this or after the Istanbul
thing was over. After, the heads of the 'Socialist
International' had another meeting - this time somewhere in
Italy, for some other reason.

The United States' President was prominent at this -
most recent meeting, in Italy - because he was the only one
not wearing a dark suit - and because he appeared to be the
only non-Socialist to attend it.

The traditional
Galeries Lafayette tree, under the store's regular
dome.

This is only worth mentioning because a recent
correspondent to this magazine flatly stated that President
Clintion is a Socialist.

I had always been under the impression that he is a
card-carrying member of the US Democratic Party, of which I
believe he may be also the leader, and this political party
has nothing whatsoever to do with the Socialist Party, USA
- which was not invited to any of these 'Socialist
International' meetings.

In Italy, it was plain to see that Mr. Clinton is not a
Socialist, because his suit - and shirt, and tie! - were
different colors from Socialist costumes. Even Britain's
Tony Blair - the nearly right-wing Socialist - was wearing
a Socialist suit, shirt and tie.

What these meetings were about, I have no idea, because
I did not catch the initials by which they are
known.

French Web Life This Week

Rando Fever Goes Cyber

Actually 'rando' means 'randonnée' in French,
which simply means walking around. If with a destination in
mind, then this is a serious 'sport' in France. There is a
Web site devoted to it, along the lines of 'All You Ever Wanted To Know
About Rando Fever.' Careful though, this site is a
heavy loader or otherwise somewhat slow.

Le Maroc de
Matisse

This is a current exhibition at the Institut du Monde
Arabe in Paris, but I don't know anything about it except
for what I see on its posters in the underground darkness
of the métro. The Institut's
Web site has it all - and 'Flash' as well - which is
possibly why they don't send me the press releases as they
have promised to do.

Another French Region Goes
Online

A truly wonderful thing about the Web are these
'regional' sites such as this one for Rhône-Alpes. In
addition to featuring its cities - Grenoble, Lyon, Annecy,
Avignon and Chambéry - it also has information
concerning over 2,200 other places in the area. Rich in
local lore, it also has news, classified ads, and touring
information.

Worried About the 'Y2K' Bug?

The UK's Foreign
and Commonwealth Office has assembled a list of risky
2000-Bug countries, and yours may be on it. The whole list
counts 133 countries, from Zimbabwe's Cadillac Ranch - it
has one too! - to Angola, which is just next door. The
practical side of this is knowing that Singapore - just for
one example - intends to shut down its ferry fleet from
23:30 on Friday, 31. December until 00:15 on Saturday, 1.
January 2000; and all but 10 percent of its civil aviation
systems are ready for the next millennium.

The
Internet and Tourism

Erkki Liikanen thinks the Internet will force the
tourism industries to change the way they do business; with
a public more and more online. As Metropole readers well
know, this is a worldwide public - so Web operations for it
cannot be an isolated ghetto within [nearly] obsolete
'national boundaries.' Find out what the 'experts' at the
'European'
level are thinking about this.

Printemps has two sets
of balloons; one has '1999' and the other, '2000.'

Shorties: - The TV-guide magazine
'Télérama' and the city's 'Forum des Images'
have organized the 4th Multimedia Festival, which intends
to show off the best French CD-ROM productions of the year.
This can't be done without the Web, so check this
festival out - it continues until Wednesday. France
Télécom's ' Voilà' is testing
the waters of the robot-translation act. Try
changing Metropole into French or German - for a little
snicker. I accidently threw out my copy of Le Parisien with
next year's 'Tour de France' map on its back
page. See it here; see it now before it's too late!

Some of the suggestions for these Web site references
have been supplied by 'Internet Actu.'